Last year, the streaming wars got into full swing when Mixer signed Tyler "Ninja" Blevins to an exclusivity deal, thereby poaching one of Twitch's top streamers. From there, we saw a series of signings that took some high profile streamers away from Twitch and put them exclusively on not only Mixer, but also YouTube and Facebook Gaming.
If you were expecting the streaming wars to cool down as we head into 2020, it looks like you were wrong. YouTube is kicking the new year off in a big way, announcing today that it has signed three more streamers to exclusive deals. From here on out, Lannon "LazarBeam" Eacott, Elliot "Muselk" Watkins, and Rachell "Valkyrae" Hofstetter will be streaming exclusively on YouTube, leaving Twitch in the dust.
Games Done Quick has wrapped up another speedrunning marathon, and unsurprisingly, it's broken more fundraising records. Awesome Games Done Quick 2020 - the flagship event for GDQ - ended yesterday with a grand total of $3,135,900.56 raised for the Prevent Cancer Foundation. On top of that, GDQ has announced that it's also raised more than $25 million for charity across all of its events.
Twitch is a free streaming video platform that has a 'premium experience' for people who are willing to pay. Called Twitch Prime, this premium offering is available to people who have Amazon Prime or Prime Video subscriptions, offering them access to exclusive in-game content, a free monthly channel subscription, exclusive emotes, a chat badge and, most importantly, access to free games.
Twitch has enjoyed a long tenure as king of the video game streaming hill, but lately, its competitors have been making power moves. Throughout the latter half of this year, Facebook, Mixer, and YouTube have all been signing various top Twitch streamers to exclusivity deals, pulling those personalities away from Twitch.
Death Stranding is out today, and if you're still not sure what to make of it now that the reviews have landed and the dust has settled a bit, you probably aren't alone. The latest from Hideo Kojima is definitely a weird one, but the seems to be working in the game's favor. That's because - at the time of this writing, at least - Death Stranding is the most-watched game on Twitch and it isn't even close.
Earlier this year, Microsoft made a big move in the streaming space, striking a deal with Tyler "Ninja" Blevins that would see him jumping ship from Twitch to stream exclusively on Mixer. As it turns out, Microsoft wasn't done with the power plays, as another big streamer - Michael "Shroud" Grzesiek - has announced that he'll be streaming exclusively on Mixer from here on out as well.
Streaming platform Twitch is testing a new feature called 'Watch Parties' that allows streamers to watch movies from Prime Video with viewers who have a Prime subscription. The feature is only available to invited streamers at this time, but it hints at a future feature that'll make it possible for many people located around the world to tune into the same movie night.
This has been quite the exciting week for Fortnite. Over the weekend, Epic basically hit the reset button on the game, deleting the map and leaving players staring at a black hole. The game was inaccessible for more than a day as players continued to be greeted by that black hole in-game and across Epic's social media. Then, today, Fortnite sprung back to live, with Epic kicking off Fortnite Chapter 2, which brings a new map and new mechanics along with it.
Politicians are always looking to ways to appeal younger generations, and that's led some of them to turn to video game streaming platform Twitch. We can now add US President Donald Trump to that list, as he used the platform to stream a campaign rally from Minneapolis last night. That was likely the first of many Twitch livestreams for the President, who already has a verified account.
Being one of the biggest live streaming services around, Twitch is obviously something that's available on a wide array of devices. Whether you want to watch on a desktop computer, game console or smartphone, there's probably an official Twitch app you can download to do just that. Up until today, that somehow wasn't true for Apple TV, but Twitch has fixed that oversight by rolling out an official app for Apple's media player.
Even though it isn't quite time for another week-long Games Done Quick speedrunning marathon yet, GDQ is hosting a special weekend event at TwitchCon 2019. Games Done Quick Express, as it's called, has officially kicked off, and throughout the weekend, speedrunners attending TwitchCon will be showing off their skills. When everything is tallied up, Games Done Quick will be live for more than 50 hours this weekend, with plenty of speedruns to watch.